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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28408275">Glow in the Darkness</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/zombiesbecrazy/pseuds/zombiesbecrazy'>zombiesbecrazy</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>All For The Game - Nora Sakavic</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Fluff, Gen, Jean is a Trojan, Jeremy is a good roommate, Post-Canon, and that is ok, sometimes when you are raised and tortured in an underground cult you become afraid of the dark</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 17:07:10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,645</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28408275</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/zombiesbecrazy/pseuds/zombiesbecrazy</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Jean jolted upright, gasping for air and he fumbled in the dark until his shaking fingers brushed the bedside lamp and he managed to switch it on, soft yellow glow filling his room.</p>
<p>Of all the trauma and issues that years of living at Evermore had left him with, Jean never would have guessed that he would be afraid of the dark.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>jean moreau &amp; jeremy knox</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>34</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Glow in the Darkness</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>The only thing that I can say for absolute certainty about 2020 is that I became unhealthily obsessed with All for the Game and I regret nothing. I have adopted Jean Moreau because I become fixated on side characters with issues and minimal canon exposure and the boy needs some softness.</p>
<p>Sorry if you are a subscriber and were hoping for some Bat fic from me, but I did post a <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28395069">Jason and Damian fic</a><br/> yesterday :)</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Jean jolted upright, gasping for air and he fumbled in the dark until his shaking fingers brushed the bedside lamp and he managed to switch it on, soft yellow glow filling his room.</p>
<p>Of all the trauma and issues that years of living at Evermore had left him with, Jean never would have guessed that he would be afraid of the dark. He had lived in the dark. He was used to the dark. If anything it should be the light and the sun of California that made him uneasy, but now here he was months later with the panic building in his chest, threatening to crush his ribcage into a thousand shards and pierce his heart and lungs along the way.</p>
<p>The therapist that the Trojans had required him to see every week told him that it was normal and part of the healing process now that Jean farther away from his experiences and could process what had happened in a safe environment. Bad things had happened in the dark to him, and now his brain connecting that environmental aspect to his pain, and it was creating a panic response even when there was no immediate threat.</p>
<p>Meaning that he was now a six foot five, twenty one year old who was suddenly afraid of the shadows and mysterious bumps in the night even though he knew he was perfectly safe and far from any of the monsters who had haunted his dreams.</p>
<p>Jean had walked out of the therapist’s office that day, punched the brick wall of the building outside, and glared up at the sun as if it had personally wronged him, instead of everyone else in his life. Nothing about his background had been normal, and if he was safe now, why was he so weak to be afraid of something so inconsequential as the absence of light? He knew he had actual trauma to terrorize himself with after years of literal torture at Riko’s hands and instead his brain was fixating on something mundane like the damn dark.</p>
<p>He had been practicing techniques; breathing patterns and grounding exercises to remind him where he was and his heart rate was lowering as he slowly worked his way through them. It was a process, but he had to admit that once he had given them a chance, it did help. After he calmed down enough to breathe without choking, Jean needed to get up and get a drink of water, bottle at his bedside empty, but he knew that he couldn’t do so without waking up Jeremy on his way.</p>
<p>It was curious how dorms could be so different from school to school. Evermore had been abnormal, but Jean had always thought that American colleges would have a standard set up for the housing of their students, perhaps with a little variety for wealth, but generic none the less. He had seen the dorms at Palmetto once during his stay with the nurse, having gone with Kevin once in a poor attempt at bonding. He had been surprised to see their set up, just as he had been surprised again when he reached USC.</p>
<p>The athlete housing was a twenty floor tower, with all the dorms being two athletes per suite, but each had their own room with a small shared bathroom, kitchen and living area. Jeremy had been in the same suite for three years now, but his roommate had graduated, and Jean was put in his stead. The match made sense; the rest of the upperclassmen on the team had had the same roommates for years, and rooming a freshman with either the captain or a senior transfer wasn’t ideal, so they had ended up together. Months later though, Jean was left wondering if he would have ended up with Jeremy regardless.</p>
<p>Jean knew that Jeremy was more aware of what had happened to Jean in the Nest than he let on. The story to the general public was that the Ravens were being investigated and put on probation due to hazing practices of their athletes. The rest of the Trojan players were aware that it was a little more extreme than that, and that Jean had suffered the majority of the abuse, which was the cause of the transfer before the investigation started, but they didn’t have any details and none of them had asked after Jean had made it abundantly clear that he wasn’t going to talk to them about it. Jeremy had said nothing specific, but his actions suggested that he knew more. He knew not to sneak up behind him or touch him. He kept his bedroom door open at all times, as if he knew that Jean was uncomfortable being alone. The music that constantly played in the background to keep the silence at bay. He was aware of Jean’s moods and triggers and magically seemed to navigate them with relative ease, inserting himself as a protective, but yet not overbearing, buffer between Jean and any potential harm in the world.</p>
<p>Jean didn’t want to think about how he would be faring without all those things, as small as they were. He wondered how many conversations Jeremy had had with Kevin before his arrival and how many more concessions he made to his life without Jean being aware of them.</p>
<p>He wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answer to either of them in case they went away.</p>
<p>As much as he appreciated the open doors between their bedrooms with their illusion of privacy but yet their silent message of support, it often meant that Jean woke Jeremy up in the middle of the night despite all his best efforts not to.</p>
<p>Years in the Nest had conditioned him out of screaming, but his therapist was helping him realize that he had been doing so anyway without making a sound. It was just that nobody had cared until now.</p>
<p>Jean sighed and stretched, bones cracking all the way down his spine. Now that he was awake and his heart was pounding slightly less, he needed to get up to go to the bathroom before attempting to go back to sleep, with or without the water. He crept out of bed quietly, slipping through the doorway and past Jeremy’s room where he could just barely make out his sleeping form in the dark.</p>
<p>The living room lights were on when Jean left the bathroom, and there was a sleepy looking Jeremy leaning against his doorframe, yawning and rubbing one of his eyes. “Hey.” Jean opened his mouth to apologize for waking him up in the middle of the night again for what had to be the fiftieth time but Jeremy waved a hand and shuffled to the couch. He started scrolling through his phone apps, pulling one up, but Jean couldn’t see what it was from where he stood. Jeremy gave people his full attention when talking to them, not aimlessly looking at his phone, so the action had purpose. “I got us a present,” he said softly. Jean just blinked at him in response, confused by the statement. They had just returned back to the dorms for training camp to start tomorrow after spending holiday at the Knox’s. Jeremy’s family was big and loud and overwhelming, but in a way that Jean had found endearing instead of terrifying. They had fully welcomed Jean into their home and traditions and had been lovely to him for absolutely no reason other than the fact that they were the Knoxes. It was still something he was getting used to, seeing how families function happily in real life and just not a made up scenario that happened on TV.</p>
<p>It had been so long since he had a real family that he had forgotten what it could be like. He had brought back enough homemade cookies to last for at least a month. They actually tasted like they were made with love, which was ridiculous because that isn’t a thing.</p>
<p>He wished he had more.</p>
<p>“It’s December 28.”</p>
<p>“Boxing Week sale.”</p>
<p>“I have nothing to give you.” He and Jeremy had already exchanged Christmas gifts, Jean wearing the bunny slippers on his feet as proof. Was New Year’s a holiday for presents as well? Something that happened in the real world that he had been unaware of, after years of being so far removed from it? Was he missing some sort of tradition?</p>
<p>Jeremy shook his head. “This is for both of us. It’s for our room.” He tapped at his phone and Jean’s heart leapt into his throat again as the lights in the living room faded to a purple. Jeremy tapped again and the lights in his room flipped on to orange. Once more, and the bathroom glowed a bright blue. Jean turned to Jeremy who was grinning at his phone as he fiddled with the settings, making the light in the bathroom dim and then brighten.</p>
<p>Once the initial shock had passed, Jean had to admit that lights were lovely. The colours were painting the walls and filling the rooms with a glow and the ominous shadows that once had monsters lurking beneath them in the dark were now gentle and non threatening.</p>
<p>“I swapped the bulbs earlier when you went over to see Laila. I’ll add the app to your phone in the morning, but voice commands work with Alexa too. You can change how bright they are and switch them to any colour you want. Blue, green, red, whatever.”</p>
<p>Jean froze for a moment, before shaking it off, remembering what the red lights looked like against the black backdrop of the Nest, the way that it made it seem more suffocating that it already was, with the walls pressing in even closer in the shadows. He liked the look of the purple around in them though. It made everything feel warm and inviting and settled his mind a bit. “Pas de rouge. Jamais rouge,” muttered Jean more to himself than anyone else. Jeremy didn’t speak French, not anything more than counting to five or saying hello, but he had told Jean countless times that he didn't mind if Jean chose to, when English either wasn’t enough or was just too much. Another sign that he had spoken to Kevin, because a regular person wouldn’t have seen the need to say anything like that because language wasn't a think that got outlawed in regular people lives. “I’m going to take that as a negative on the red light.” Jean nodded and Jeremy mirrored it back without any emotion on his face, like it didn’t matter to him in the slightest to remove a primary colour option from their new toy. “Want to see something cool?” Jean raised an eyebrow. Wasn’t this already cool? Jeremy beamed. “Alexa! Let’s party!”</p>
<p>All the lights in the apartment started to flash at random in different colours, and music started playing far too loud than was appropriate for two in the morning with teammates sleeping on the other side of the wall. Jeremy scrambled to reopen his phone, and the music quieted to a much lower level.</p>
<p>“You are a strange creature, Jeremy Knox.”</p>
<p>“True.” Jeremy’s face was lit up by the multicoloured beams of light. “But it’s kinda fun, right?”</p>
<p>“Is that the Backstreet Boys?”</p>
<p>Jeremy turned to him, looking taken aback as if Jean had personally offended his grandmother. “Please. It’s Justin Timberlake.”</p>
<p>“Are those different things?” Music wasn’t really something that had existed in Jean’s world in the Nest. He heard it out of other player’s rooms, but it had never been something that he had paid attention to as it wasn’t critical to his survival. Once this lapse in Jean’s knowledge had been exposed, Jeremy had declared his lack of musical knowledge a tragedy and had taken it upon himself to fill Jean’s world with all sorts of music. Jeremy had recently been on a 2000s boy band kick and Jean had been made aware that there were a bunch of groups that sounded identical to him, but for some very important, but yet undiscernible reason, he was supposed to pick a favourite one. He didn’t get it.</p>
<p>Months later, Jean still didn’t know anything about music, couldn’t pick out a favourite song or musician or even genre, but he knew that he liked it being played around him and that was enough for now.</p>
<p>Jeremy shook his head in dismay, clearly disappointed in his own failings as a music guru. “Anyway, that isn’t the reason I got the lights. I know…” He paused, looked down and bit his lip, a little unsure with what he wanted to say. He took a shaky breath that shuddered on the exhale before turning back to Jean. “I know you have trouble sleeping and I know that you don’t like the dark. I didn’t want to overstep, and you said you don't want to talk about it, but I wanted to try something. Tell Alexa ‘good night’, but in French.”</p>
<p>Jean’s fought to keep a neutral look on his face, and wasn’t sure if he was succeeding. “Alexa.” The device on the kitchen bar chimed at Jean’s quiet tone. “Bonne nuit.”</p>
<p>All the lights in the suite dimmed into darkness, which is what Jean expected to happen at the command, except that every didn’t go completely dark. There was a light blue hue coming from Jean’s room, a lamp in the corner that hadn’t been there before the holiday break was keeping his space from plunging into full blackness. Jean stared around the room, not knowing what to say. The blue was a nice shade and relaxing, just bright enough for Jean to be aware of his surroundings upon waking, an instant sign that he wasn’t trapped in his nightmares. Looking at the colour seemed to relax any of the remaining residual tension in his body from his nightmare. Something released in his chest and he could breathe again with ease.</p>
<p>Jeremy began to shift his feet, suddenly looking worried, maybe concerned that he had overstepped an invisible line. “If you say it in English, everything goes completely dark. I can change it if you don’t like it.”</p>
<p>“No. I… like it.” It was still hard to admit when he liked something, the innate threat looming in the back of his mind that something that he would like would be taken away immediately just because he liked it. The first time he had said he liked something since arriving in California, it had been at dinner about a pasta dish and instead of having his meal taken away, Alvarez had simply piled more food onto his plate. “No one has ever done anything like this for me.” It was dark in the living room, but Jean could see Jeremy’s smile with the help of the light coming from his room. It was warm and just a little too much to think about after this gift that he had been given.  “I think I’m going to try and go back to sleep now. We have practice in five hours. Good night, Knox.” He knew that he should say the actual words and thank Jeremy properly to let him know that he appreciated it, but he just wasn’t there yet, and hopefully Jeremy would understand. Jean turned to head into his room and had just crawled under the blankets when he saw Jeremy standing at his doorway, illuminated by the blue, gentle expression on his face, watching him with a calming sense of security for a few moments as Jean’s eyes started to get heavy, sleep pulling at his subconscious.</p>
<p>“Sleep tight, Jean,” Jeremy said at last, before turning to head back into his own room. “You deserve some light in your life, even if that light is a little blue.”</p>
<p> </p>
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